Tag Archives: #FreedomOfThePress

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If it’s a gang, say it’s a gang! The professional media don't usually tell us outright lies, but their editorial and stylistic decisions sure do shade the truth!

The main page of The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website had, at 7:07 PM EDT on Sunday, June 25th, an interesting juxtaposition. The site seems to automatically search for and note related stories, and had two listed below the main story headline.

A South Philly neighborhood was awash in retaliatory gunfire. A recent trial showed the human cost.

“We don’t like each other,” Nyseem Smith said while telling police about shootings he and his friends committed against rival groups.

by Chris Palmer | Sunday, June 25, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

To hear Nyseem Smith tell it, shooting people was something of a pastime for him and his friends in South Philadelphia.

Week after week, sometimes day after day, Smith said, he and his crew from 31st Street would fall into a familiar routine: They’d steal a car, hop in with guns they all shared, then go looking for rivals to shoot.

Sometimes, he said, they’d seek out young men associated with 27th Street, another neighborhood group. Other times, they’d look for people who lived around the nearby Wilson Park apartments.

The cycle of violence — sometimes chronicled on Instagram — became virtually impossible to extinguish. And by the time investigators caught up with Smith in 2019, he confessed to a staggering array of crimes.

I guess that Mr Smith knew they had him! But, as you’d probably have guessed, he was singing because the prosecutors had cut him a deal.

Regular readers of The First Street Journal — both of them! — have probably realized by now that I read with a careful eye, and notice things that some might miss. In the first four paragraphs of reporter Chris Palmer’s story, we see Mr Smith’s, and other people’s, gangs referred to as “his friends,” “neighborhood group,” “crew”, and “people”. We have previously noted that the newspaper really, really, really doesn’t like to refer to gangs as gangs, and in the 42 paragraphs beyond the four that I quoted, unless I just plain missed it — and unless you’re an Inquirer subscriber, you can’t check my work on this! 🙂 — the words “gang” or “gangs” appear exactly zero times.

Mr Palmer is one of the four Inquirer reporters credited with the article in which the newspaper told us that there were no real gangs in the city!

In Philadelphia, there are no gangs in the traditional, nationally known sense. Instead, they are cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families. The groups have names — Young Bag Chasers, Penntown, Northside — and members carry an allegiance to each other, but they aren’t committing traditional organized crimes, like moving drugs, the way gangs did in the past.

Ahhh, but that search function led the Inky to post a link to this story:

Krasner, state officials announce nine arrests in long-running South Philly gang feud

District Attorney Larry Krasner said Thursday that an additional six suspects are being sought.

by Vinny Vella and Mike Newall | Thursday, April 15, 2021

Jackee Nichols had come to believe the city had forgotten about her 15-year-old grandson, Rasul Benson. In October 2018, Rasul was gunned down at a South Philadelphia Gulf station while pumping gas with his friends for tip money to buy a cheesesteak.

On Thursday morning, Nichols finally received the answer she had been waiting for when an investigator working with the Philadelphia Gun Violence Task Force called to tell her a man had been arrested and another was being sought for Benson’s slaying as part of a sweep of nine suspects involved in a gang-fueled turf war between 2016 and 2020.

There’s more at the original, but it seems that the Inky wasn’t shying away from the truth on income tax day two years ago. I assume that this somehow all stems from publisher Elizabeth Hughes’ edict that the newspaper would be an “anti-racist news organization.”

We are, we have been told, supposed to respect journalists. Columnist Jenice Armstrong recently told us that “the press is the only profession mentioned in the U.S. Constitution,” though it actually refers to the right ot people to publish, not the journalists’ profession. The newspaper’s Senior Vice President and Executive Editor, Gabriel Escobar, said, “When people say ‘fake news’ and it is aimed at staining the work that journalists do, there’s great danger in that.”

Yet here is The Philadelphia Inquirer, our nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper, older than The New York Times and The Washington Post, winner of twenty Pulitzer Prizes, mealy-mouthing their words, seemingly having amended their stylebook to soften the truth rather than simply printing it.

Our professional media don’t normally lie outright, though, like any other human beings, reporters and editors can occasionally make mistakes. But the bias in the media comes through, if you take care to notice, by what they choose to print, and not to print, by the words that they choose, normally regulated by a stylebook, to use in their stories.

If it’s a gang, say it’s a gang!

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The problem with journolism in one coffee mug

I have frequently used the word journolist to refer to some reporters, referencing JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity.

Then I saw a tweet from a relatively sane reporter of a supposedly humorous coffee mug, and it seemed particularly apt:

I’m a
Jernalist
Journolist
Jurnalist
I write the news

And that’s the problem: we don’t need people who write the news; we need people who report the news.

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The left really despise Freedom of Speech

The American Revolution was slowly being brewed by the resentments our colonial forebears felt for the really not that oppressive rule by King George III across the wide Atlantic Ocean, and Parliament’s desire that the colonists pay for the costs of their own defense in the French and Indian War. It was our freedom of speech and of the press, things His Majesty might not have liked all that much, but wasn’t in any real position to do much about them, which enabled disaffected colonists to come together in their opposition to rule by Great Britain.

Thus, you’d think that the staffers at the American Revolution Museum would have a great respect for freedom of speech. Well, if you thought that, you’d be wrong!

American Revolution Museum staffers are fighting to cancel a Moms for Liberty event

The Museum has sought to diversify the stories it tells about American history and staffers said that allowing such a group to rent its space undermines the progress the museum has made.

by Juliana Feliciano Reyes | Wednesday, June 7, 2023

Nearly 40 staffers at the Museum of the American Revolution are demanding that museum leadership cancel a scheduled event hosted by Moms for Liberty, a “parents’ rights” group recently classified as an “antigovernment extremist organization” by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Can we tell the truth here? The SPLC sees every conservative organization as ‘extremist,’ and would undoubtedly list the American Free News Network as extremist if AFNN appeared on their radar. “Parents’ rights” would certainly qualify as “extremists” to them, because the apparently wholly radical idea that parents, whose children are subject to compulsory education laws, ought to have control of what public education teaches their children is just so, so, so wrong!

You can tell how Moms for Liberty work, from their statements on their website.

The Museum, located in Old City, has sought to diversify the stories it tells about American history — its current special exhibition, “Black Founders,” is a first-of-its-kind spotlight on James Forten, a prominent Black Revolutionary War-era abolitionist — and staffers said allowing such a group to rent its space undermines the progress the museum has made.

“We do not feel that any dollar amount is worth endangering the safety of the museum staff members in the building on the day of the event, serving as a host to a group that does not stand with our values, and damaging the museum’s reputation that we have all worked so hard to build,” a petition signed by 39 staffers reads. The museum employs 75 people full time and 37 part time.

“(E)ndangering the safety of the museum staff members”? Are they accusing the Moms of coming in armed, ready to shoot the staffers, or perhaps beat them with Louisville Slugger baseball bats?

They do hold some truly radical views, claiming that they do not ‘co-parent’ with the government, and they were early in on resistance to the forced masking of children due to the COVID panicdemic.

And horror of horrors, they fought against the long-term closures of the public schools, forcing students into the disastrous remote education policies. The public schools in Philadelphia stayed closed longer than many systems due to the resistance of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers union resistance to reopening fir in-person classes.

Moms for Liberty, an organization that sought control over public education by banning books and removing curriculum related to race, gender, and sexuality, is hosting its national summit in Philadelphia at the end of this month. Featured speakers are to include GOP presidential candidates Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. The site of the summit — the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown — has already been protested by queer and trans-led groups.

Heaven forfend! The Moms wanted to stop the politicization of race in the public schools and the indoctrination of children into acceptance of homosexuality and ‘transgenderism.’ As William Teach noted, there has been a significant upsurge in younger people identifying as homosexual, bisexual, and/or ‘transgendered’ in the past few years, something that could only be caused by ‘grooming,’ by making those things seem acceptable. If individual parents wish to teach their children that such things are acceptable, that’s on them, but what the left and the teachers’ unions want to do is to indoctrinate everyone’s kids to accept that s(tuff).

Naturally, Juliana Feliciano Reyes, the Philadelphia Inquirer reporter who wrote the cited article, said that the Moms were “banning books”, without the qualification that they wanted those books out of public school libraries, period, and not trying to, or able to, prevent private libraries, bookstores, or Amazon.com from having and selling them.

(CEO R. Scott Stephenson) said no employees were required to work that night if they didn’t feel safe.

But for some employees, the damage has already been done.

“I don’t feel appreciated nor safe anymore,” said assistant curator Trish Norman, who is nonbinary. “I don’t feel the museum necessarily has my back.”

Miss Norman doesn’t feel safe anymore? Unless she is alleging that the Moms and their guests are going to assault her in some fashion, she is telling us that her precious little feelings might get hurt.

In a photo published in the article, one protester is carrying a sign saying “Free to Learn.” That’s absolutely right: she is free to teach her kids whatever she wishes. But what she apparently doesn’t want is other parents not wanting their children taught the same things the protester wants.

Well, in the American Revolution that the museum is supposed to celebrate, some American men fought and died to gain our freedom to say and believe whatever we wished, fought and died to give all Americans, even the Moms for Liberty, the right to say and advocate whatever they wished.

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The left want to control your thoughts by controlling your language

To the surprise of exactly no one among The Philadelphia Inquirer’s dwindling readership, the Inky has gone all-in on the so-called Pride Month, with three out of five articles in the opinion section relating to homosexual and transgender activism.

Philadelphia Inquirer screen capture, 6-3-23 at 10:00 AM EDT.

At Central Bucks, transphobic slurs are common and adults are unwilling to intervene

Many faculty members refuse to defend LGBTQ students from the words, phrases, slurs, names, and ill-intent that other students throw their way.

by Leo Burchell and Ben Busick, For The Inquirer | Updated Thursday, June 1, 2023 | 11:00 AM EDT

We are two trans students in the Central Bucks School District, which the American Civil Liberties Union has alleged is a “toxic environment” for LGBTQ students. In our time at Central Bucks, both of us have endured homophobic or transphobic bullying from our peers.

This bullying and discrimination has impacted our ability to learn, and Central Bucks does nothing about it.

One of us — Leo — came out as transgender and changed his name at the beginning of his senior year at Central Bucks West last September. He emailed all of his teachers about his pronouns and name. However, throughout the entire school year, one teacher consistently misgendered him, while only occasionally correcting themself.

It is hard to learn in a classroom when your teacher misgenders you to all the students present.

The authors have written this as though “Leo” Burchell is actually male, and the teachers and students must accept her as being male. It’s clear from their first paragraph, in which they stated that “both of us have endured homophobic or transphobic bullying from our peers,” that many of their fellow students have not accepted such as reality.

When entering one of the very few gender-neutral bathrooms for students to use, Leo was called a “tranny” by a student passing by. That gender-neutral bathroom also frequently lacks toilet paper, paper towels, or both. Another student hurled a homophobic slur at Leo as he handed out flyers about a protest before school one morning.

It is a legitimate complaint if the school, which has gone to the effort to establish ‘gender-neutral’ bathrooms, is not servicing them adequately. But that’s about the only legitimate complaint the authors made.

Central Bucks South, for Ben, has unfortunately not been much better. Homophobic and transphobic phrases are commonplace, and often targeted at Ben. They came out as nonbinary in their sophomore year of high school in 2021. Fortunately, many of their teachers have made a real effort to get their pronouns right and use them correctly. Their lovely AP Spanish teacher even taught Ben’s class (with Ben’s permission) about the Spanish word for nonbinary and the gender-neutral pronouns and conjugations of gendered words. She will probably never realize what an impact that simple gesture had.

“They” is, of course, a plural pronoun, making the short sentence, “They came out as nonbinary in their sophomore year of high school in 2021”, grammatically incorrect and jarring to the ears of an English-speaking person.

However, some faculty members do not try to integrate their pronouns into everyday language. These faculty often use strategies like, “I am just going to use your name so I don’t have to get your pronouns wrong,” which seems like an attempt to be inclusive at first glance but is really just a cop-out. Most transgender and nonbinary people would much rather someone make a mistake, correct themselves, and move on. (If someone with good, inclusive intentions makes a mistake, no big deal.)

Some faculty and most students at Central Bucks South, however, do not appear to have good intentions and rarely use Ben’s pronouns correctly. Even worse, many teachers witness students using the incorrect names and pronouns for transgender and nonbinary students — and do nothing about it.

If “some faculty and most students . . . do not appear to have good intentions” in this, as Miss Burchell and Mr Busick wrote, that is a clear indication that those faculty and students do not accept the claim that Miss Burchell is now a guy and Mr Busick is something other than a male. The authors have an absolute right to claim to be what they are, and to say so publicly, but just as their freedom of speech allows them to do that, the freedom of speech of other people allows other people to not only disagree with the authors’ claims, but say so publicly.

Many faculty members refuse to defend their LGBTQ students from the words, phrases, slurs, names, and ill-intent that other students throw their way. As such, we know many LGBTQ students who often dread going to school.

Sticks and stones, we were once told, could break our bones, but names would never hurt us. However, for Miss Burchell and Mr Busick, “words, phrases, slurs, names, and ill intent” do hurt, and they are demanding protection from those words. One wonders: if the homosexual, bisexual, and transgendered are to be protected from “words, phrases, slurs, names, and ill intent” aimed at their sexual orientation and identity, from what other “words, phrases, slurs, names, and ill intent” should other students, normal students, be protected, because “words, phrases, slurs, names, and ill intent” occur all the time in schools, for a myriad of reasons and just general dislike.

Perhaps they could submit a Hurt Feelings Report Form?

This is, to me, serious, because there are all sorts of attempts to legislate, censor, or otherwise ‘do something’ about ‘hate speech,’ and while the OpEd piece I selected is by high school seniors, there are (supposedly) serious adults who want the government to somehow take action against speech the left don’t like. The attempt to regulate and control speech is an attempt to regulate and control thought: if the government can somehow compel people to use language that agrees with the claims of the ‘transgendered,’ it becomes an effort to legitimize transgenderism, to push the thoughts of people who have a perfect right to reject the cockamamie claim that people can change their sex into avenues which accept that claim. Not just no, but Hell no!

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Oops! Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Vinny Vella might be about to get called on the carpet!

It looks like Philadelphia Inquirer suburban reporter Vinny Vella is going to get called onto the carpet in Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Gabriel Escobar’s office: he referred to “gang” rather than “street group”! Then again, it wasn’t his first offense.

A group of Philly teens stole nearly 20 guns from a Bucks County gun shop, according to police

LugarMan Inc., in Langhorne, was burglarized at about 3 a.m. Tuesday, police said. The suspects were arrested in Trenton after a long chase through the suburbs.

by Vinny Vella | Tuesday, May 30, 2023 | 1:20 PM EDT

A group of Philadelphia teens burglarized a Bucks County gun store early Tuesday, according to police. The incident, which ended with three young people in custody, is the latest in a series of similar heists targeting gun stores in Bucks and Montgomery Counties.

This is a major pet peeve of mine! People have used “burglarize” so much that it’s now in the dictionary, but any educated person, especially a writer, should use the original word, burgle.

A motion-sensor alarm at LugerMan Inc. in Langhorne notified police in Middletown Township at around 3 a.m., Detective Lt. Steve Forman said. When officers arrived, they saw a car pulling out of the store’s lot and followed it.

The Middletown Township officers continued to chase the vehicle as it sped away from the store, Forman said. Officers from nearby Falls Township assisted, throwing down a spike strip that struck the car’s tires but didn’t end the pursuit.

The teens continued to Morrisville and then over the Calhoun Street Bridge to Trenton, where they lost control of the car and crashed without injury, according to Forman. Trenton Police helped arrest three teens, who haven’t been identified and remain in custody in the New Jersey city as they await extradition to Bucks County.

Mr Vella reported that all of the stolen firearms were recovered.

I just had to go ahead and take the screen capture, to document what was there before it got edited away.

Naturally, I don’t have access to any formal statement of the Inquirer’s stylebook, so perhaps the word “gang” actually is permitted, and only reporters Ellie Rushing, Jessica Griffin, Ximena Conde, and Chris Palmer, who wrote:

In Philadelphia, there are no gangs in the traditional, nationally known sense. Instead, they are cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families. The groups have names — Young Bag Chasers, Penntown, Northside — and members carry an allegiance to each other, but they aren’t committing traditional organized crimes, like moving drugs, the way gangs did in the past.

actually persist in the “street group” nonsense, something that I have previously mocked.

The best part of Mr Vella’s story? The fact that the burglaries occurred in Bucks County, and not in Philadelphia, so the soft-on-crime, police-hating defense mouthpiece who is now Philly’s District Attorney, Larry Krasner, won’t have the authority to let the alleged burglars and thieves off with the lightest of slaps on the wrist. These “teens” need to be charged as adults if possible, tried, convicted, and locked up for as long as the law allows.

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The Philadelphia Inquirer tells us about its impending death.

Yes, I subscribe to The Philadelphia Inquirer, to keep up with the news from the state in which I lived for fifteen years, and the news from the City of Brotherly Love, and yes, I have often mocked the paper by calling it The Philadelphia Enquirer, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it sometimes can be. RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but it seems apt enough that I often use it. And thus I was wryly amused by this story:

At Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station, the last newsstand stopped selling newspapers

The explanation, sadly, is old news. Nearly no one was buying them.

by Mike Newall | Pentecost Sunday, May 28, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

The handwritten sign hung on the door of the newsstand at 30th Street Station. It offered one final headline from a shop that will carry no more.

“No newspapers,” it read, underlined four times for emphasis.

That’s because earlier this month Faber, the New Jersey-based newsstand and bookseller, stopped selling newspapers at its 30th Street location. The store’s shelves remain stocked with magazines, periodicals, books, snacks, greeting cards, and travel trinkets. But the iconic station’s sole newsagent is now a newsstand without newspapers.

The explanation, sadly, is old news. Nearly no one was buying them.

One would think that this story would truly alarm Publisher Elizabeth ‘Lisa’ Hughes, Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Gabriel Escobar, and the Leftist Lenfest Institute for Journalism, which owns the newspaper. If no one is buying the newspaper, that means that no one wants the newspaper, at least not enough to pay the newsstand price of $2.95.

Slumping sales would hardly come as a surprise. Not in the Age of Smartphones. Not when the pandemic only worsened the newspaper industry’s existential struggle to survive its digital transformation. And not as newsstands themselves, like coin-operated news boxes before them, slowly disappear.

But newspaper sales had grown beyond bleak at 30th Street Station, Carr said. Each year an estimated four million passengers pass through the station’s soaring concourse, making it Amtrak’s third busiest hub. Meanwhile, in recent times, the stand rarely sold more than a dozen daily papers each day, Carr said. (And mostly out-of-town publications. Ouch.) Then there’s rising prices, delivery costs, and time and energy spent bundling up returns.

I’m actually a special case. Due at least in part to my poor hearing, getting the news via television or radio isn’t effective for me. More, when I read the news, if there’s something which sounds strange or inconsistent, I can go back are reread the part that confused me. More, using printed material for my poor site, I like using a more comprehensive and consistent site; newspapers have the ability to go more into depth than the broadcast/cablecast media. Finally, I delivered newspapers when I was in junior high and high schools. They are, for me, a medium I appreciate and like.

But if newspapers, which actually are just updated 18th century technology, want to survive somehow, they have to produce a product that people actually want to not just read, but actually buy. National news we can get for free, even if in print form, from CNN or Fox or the new News Nation, which claims to be unbiased. I’m paying for the Inky because I’m looking for Philly and Pennsylvania news, and if the Inky can’t provide that, in a form that people will buy, in the end, our nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper will be history.

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In trying to avoid calling street gangs gangs, The Philadelphia Inquirer has again beclowned itself

We have expended some bandwidth mocking The Philadelphia Inquirer for its statement that there are no real gangs in the City of Brotherly Love:

In Philadelphia, there are no gangs in the traditional, nationally known sense. Instead, they are cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families. The groups have names — Young Bag Chasers, Penntown, Northside — and members carry an allegiance to each other, but they aren’t committing traditional organized crimes, like moving drugs, the way gangs did in the past.

We also mocked the George Soros-sponsored defense mouthpiece who is now the city’s District Attorney, Larry Krasner, when his office decided to refer to them as rival street groups. And we pointed out, at the end of last year, that what I have frequently called The Philadelphia Enquirer[1]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt. was still using euphemisms to refer to gangs those cliques of young men, though the word “gang” in one article, apparently for prosaic reasons, since the term “street group” had been used previously in the same sentence.

Since then, we have noted the newspaper’s adoption of the term “street groups.”

And now? The Enquirer Inquirer is taking a silly effort to justify it!

North Philadelphia street group ‘BNG’ members have been charged in multiple shootings

Prosecutors say four men committed a string of shootings in 2021 that left two people dead and five others injured.

by Ellie Rushing | Tuesday, May 23, 2023

The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office on Tuesday announced charges against four young men affiliated with a North Philadelphia street group that investigators say committed a string of shootings in 2021 that left two people dead and five others injured.

Following a more than year-long investigation, prosecutors charged four men they say are affiliated with the group “BNG” or “Big Naddy Gang” — named after a 15-year-old boy known as “Naddy” who was fatally shot in April 2021.

So, the “street group” members call themselves a “gang,” but the Inky can’t? 🙂

After the teen was killed, prosecutors said, his friends — seeking retaliation and local notoriety — formed BNG and committed at least five shootings in the next six months, chronicling the violence along the way on social media, in rap songs, and in texts to one another.

District Attorney Larry Krasner said Tuesday that the young men wrote in one text that they “put the ‘h’ in homicide.”

“Today, we’re going to put the ‘j’ in jail,” the DA said.

One does wonder whether Mr Krasner had the opportunity to put the ‘j’ in jail for the accused previously, but declined to do so.

Mugshots via 6ABC News, because the Inquirer would never publish them.

The story went on to describe the crimes allegedly committed by the members of the gang, Dontae Sutton, then 17, Jamir Brunson-Gans, 18 at the time, Elijah Soto, then 16, and Khalil Henry, then 17.

Brunson-Gans and Soto have each been charged with murder, attempted murder, and related crimes.

Henry has been charged with murder, two counts of attempted murder, and related offenses.

Sutton has been charged with murder, four counts of attempted murder, and many additional crimes.

Since three of the four were under 18 at the times of their alleged offenses, the obvious question becomes: will Mr Krasner charge them as adults, or juveniles? Mr Soto has already had that break previously:

Soto was arrested in January 2022 and charged with conspiracy and simple assault after court records say he and three others attacked, kicked, and stabbed a juvenile. A court spokesperson said the adult charges against Soto were withdrawn and the case was transferred to juvenile court.

Here’s where the Inky gets funny:

This is the third sprawling indictment of a Philadelphia street group in just the last six months, as the District Attorney’s Office, in partnership with local and federal police, try to crack down on the numerous street groups across Philadelphia.

Those groups — which prosecutors call gangs, a label sometimes contested by community members given the groups’ small size and fluid structure and membership — are often made up of a small group of friends, mostly young men, largely from the same neighborhood. Many are involved in the drill rap scene, and their music and social media posts often chronicle — and fuel — shootings, authorities say.

So, even the District Attorney calls them gangs now, but The Philadelphia Inquirer will not? One wonders: what is the minimum size at which a “street group” becomes a “gang” as far as the Inky is concerned? Maybe when they call themselves Bloods or Crips?

At what point do the editors and the publisher of the Inquirer realize just how foolish they look? Everyone reading the Inky’s stories knows that they mean “gang” when they write “street group,” so it isn’t as though the newspaper is somehow fooling anybody.

References

References
↑1 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.
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In trying to avoid calling street gangs gangs, The Philadelphia Inquirer has again beclowned itself.

We have frequently mocked, as have others, when we were reliably informed by what I have frequently referred to as The Philadelphia Enquirer[1]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt. that there are no gangs in the city, just “cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families,” who sometimes had “beefs” with other cliques, so we must replace the term “gang-bangers” with “cliques of young men” or “clique beefers”. District Attorney Larry Krasner and his office seem to prefer the term “rival street groups.” Somehow, some way, the #woke[2]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading publisher and editors and journolists[3]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading at our nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper just can’t bring themselves to say the word “gang.”

And here they go again!

West Philly street group members charged with three shootings, including two homicides

The investigation follows a December bust by the District Attorney’s Office’s Gun Violence Task Force

by Jesse Bunch and Ellie Rushing | Tuesday, May 2, 2023

Philadelphia law enforcement officials on Tuesday announced the arrests of four people affiliated with West Philadelphia street groups who they say are responsible for committing multiple shootings in 2021 that left two people dead.

The District Attorney’s Office, following an investigation that took longer than a year, said it has charged four people connected with the street groups known as “56st” and “524″ for their roles in the shooting deaths of two people in Southwest Philadelphia, as well as shootings that injured three others.

Roderick Williams, 23, faces charges of murder, attempted murder, and firearms violations in the shooting death of 21-year-old Michael Mines in April 2021, said Jeffrey Palmer, assistant supervisor of the District Attorney’s Office’s Gun Violence Task Force.

Williams is affiliated with “56st,” Palmer said, a group based in the Cobbs Creek neighborhood that also goes by “Christy Rec,” a reference to the nearby recreation center.

There’s more at the original.

The Inky’s original was 693 words long, in which I counted 11 uses of the word ‘group’ or ‘groups,’ and no use at all of the words ‘gang’ or ‘gangs.’ The previous Inquirer article linked in the blurb also used the words ‘group’ and ‘groups,’ but, in the sixth paragraph down, did use the description “rival gang”, almost certainly for prosaic reasons, since reporters Rodrigo Torrejón and Ellie Rushing used the word group earlier in the same sentence.

One wonders if they got the backs of their hands smacked by Inquirer Editor and Senior Vice President Gabriel Escobar. 🙂

Of course, the Inky, which publisher Elizabeth Hughes promised to make an “anti-racist news organization,” is very, very worried about anything which could cast doubt on that:

A group of Black community advocates criticized a recent Inquirer investigation as racist and harmful

Advocates said the story perpetuated unfair stereotypes. The Inquirer’s editor said “the goal here was to bring a serious issue to light, and the story has done that.”

by Chris Palmer | Monday, May 1, 2023

A group of prominent Black community advocates gathered Monday to criticize a recent Inquirer investigation into how the city awarded millions in anti-violence grants as racist and harmful, calling it an unfair portrayal of the difficult work advocates have long been performing in communities suffering from high rates of gunfire.

Speaking at a news conference in North Philadelphia, Reuben Jones, executive director of the nonprofit Frontline Dads, said the story — which found that a city-run grant program had invested in some community nonprofits without budgets, employees, or directors — perpetuated racist stereotypes, including the notion that Black people from poor neighborhoods can’t be trusted to responsibly manage taxpayer money.

Standing before a group of about two dozen other advocates, Jones said: “These are the community members that represent healing … in the community that you don’t respect, that you don’t value, that you don’t trust.”

There’s more at the original, but the Inky’s story was basically pointing out that several — not all — of the organizations granted the funds did not have the kind of internal organizational structure which allowed either efficient spending or responsible reporting of expenditures.

But the city’s grant program (with administrative costs it totaled $22 million) was also marked by a politicized selection process that flushed millions of dollars into nascent nonprofits unprepared to manage the money — resulting in millions of dollars left unspent and tens of thousands unaccounted for, an Inquirer investigation has found.

Is that racist?

Speakers at Monday’s news conference defended the work that many grassroots organizations do, saying many have provided services for years without any outside funding or recognition. They said advocates frequently have to adjust tactics or spending to respond to the needs of participants, many of whom are difficult to reach — and that their groups should not be criticized for having to change course.

Holston was among the speakers who said the city needs to distribute more funding to grassroots organizations led by Black men and women. He added that critical reporting could make that more difficult to achieve.

“Do not bash the city for actually doing what we asked: To be creative and take a risk in the middle of an emergency. That’s what they’re supposed to do,” Holston said. “When you bash them like that, we can’t get them to do that again.”

You know what wasn’t in the article? There were no claims that the investigative article by the Inquirer actually got anything wrong, just that it was harmful for the newspaper to actually investigate the subject. But the Inky was worried enough that the top editor, Mr Escobar, felt the need to respond, something he rarely does.

So, if simply questioning what a civic organization does with government money is racist, I have to ask the next question: is referring to gangs, the word most people would use, racist, so racist that the Inky has to use the awkward formulation “street groups”? It’s not as though readers don’t know that the newspaper is referring to gangs.

Do the editors and journolists of the Inquirer simply assume that all readers will see the word ‘gang’ and read ‘black’? It’s not like all gangs are black gangs, but perhaps the denizens of the newsroom believe that they are.

In striving to become an “anti-racist news organization,” the Inquirer has beclowned itself. The vast majority of readers would have seen nothing special about the words ‘gang’ or ‘gangs,’ but the newspaper went through the blatantly obvious verbal contortions in a way which makes readers pay attention to the awkward phraseology, something which can only lead readers to do the opposite of what the Inky is trying to do, downplay the notions of gangs.

References

References
↑1 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.
↑2 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.

↑3 The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
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The left really do hate Freedom of Speech and of The Press

As we have previously reported, the professional media can get very, very upset when other professional media members report things that do not fit Teh Narrative.

Admittedly, I was using the professional media in Philadelphia as my focus, as I frequently express my interest in our nation’s sixth-largest city. But it isn’t just Philly, as CNN is a national source.

Opinion: Why is ‘60 Minutes’ amplifying the views of Marjorie Taylor Greene?

Opinion by Dean Obeidallah | Updated Monday, April 3, 2323 | 8:26 AM EDT

Last year, GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia spoke at a white nationalist event organized by Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes that caused Republican leaders to denounce her.

Last week, Greene’s Twitter account was temporarily suspended by the Elon Musk-headed platform over a tweet with a graphic referring to a “Trans Day of Vengeance,” as she denounced a planned transgender rights rally.

And come Tuesday, Greene has announced plans to protest in New York City when former President Donald Trump is expected to be arraigned on an indictment of more than 30 counts, calling the proceedings against him an “unconstitutional WITCH HUNT!”

I’m beginning to get the impression that Mr Obeidallah doesn’t like Mrs Greene very much!

So, who is Dean Obeidallah? The CNN article describes him as: “a former attorney, (and) is the host of SiriusXM radio’s daily program “The Dean Obeidallah Show.” Follow him @DeanObeidallah@masto.ai. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.” So, he, too, is a member of the professional media.

But on Sunday, Greene was featured on CBS’ “60 Minutes” in an interview the long-running show promoted on Twitter with the tease: “Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, nicknamed MTG, isn’t afraid to share her opinions, no matter how intense and in-your-face they are. She sits down with Lesley Stahl this Sunday on 60 Minutes.” The images attached to this tweet by “60 Minutes” include Greene and Stahl walking through the US Capitol, taking a stroll outside and Greene showing Stahl something on her phone.

In the segment that aired Sunday night, Stahl noted the congresswoman had moved from the fringe to the GOP’s front row in two years despite a “sharp tongue” and “some pretty radical views” as well as “over the top” comments such as “the Democrats are a party of pedophiles.” Stahl also referred to video of Greene chasing a Parkland, Florida, school shooting survivor, still maintaining that the 2020 election was stolen and failing to criticize Trump over spending. (The interview was conducted before news of his indictment.)

But Stahl didn’t mention Greene spoke at a white nationalist event a year ago while a member of Congress or her extreme anti-Muslim views and her defense of January 6 rioters.

That little related article reference above? I screen captured it, and put it in exactly the same place, and same size, it was on the CNN original. It references another opinion piece, this time by Jill Filipovic McCormick, another hard-left columnist, who wants Mrs Greene kicked out of Congress.

Mrs Greene, however, very well represents the views of her district, the 14th congressional district in Georgia. She won her primary elections easily, and the general election in 2020 by a massive landslide over Democrat Kevin Van Ausdal, 229,827 (74.7%) to 77,798 (25.3%). In 2022, she defeated Democrat Marcus Flowers 170,162 (65.86%) to 88,189 (34.14%). Mrs McCormick’s article was written a month after Mrs Greene’s re-election victory.

Criticism of CBS for amplifying Greene has been swift and well-deserved even before the program aired. Former GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois tweeted beforehand: “Wow. Insane that 60 min would do this.” (Kinzinger is a CNN senior political commentator.)

Journalist Molly Jong-Fast also slammed “60 Minutes” with the tweet: “Attention is currency and 60 minutes is spending its currency on the Jewish space lasers woman.” (Jong-Fast was apparently referring to Greene’s past claim that a massive California wildfire was started by “a laser” beamed from space controlled by a prominent Jewish banking family.)

David Hogg, who survived the 2018 horrific school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland and has since become an activist against gun violence, responded, “I look forward to your questions about why she thinks school shootings are fake and why she’s supported QAnon.”

So, Mr Obeidallah listed a #NeverTrump Republican who has become a “CNN senior political commentator”, a liberal journolist[1]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading, and a left activist. Quite the sample size there!

The distinguished Mr Obeidallah is, as you would guess, a hard-left hater of Donald Trump, as the screen capture from his Mastodon to the right shows. It’s just natural that he would despise everything for which Mrs Greene stands. But there’s something which pegs the irony meter that someone who is purporting to be a journalist and opinion commentator, someone who exercises his Freedom of Speech and of the Press, attacking someone else being allowed to exercise her Freedom of Speech, and CNN’s Freedom of the Press for broadcasting her. Mrs Greene’s constituents knew what she is like, and they still gave her an almost two-to-one margin over her Democratic opponent in the last election, so perhaps, if Mr Obeidallah believes she is so utterly, utterly horrible, so many people in her district supported her.

Mr Obeidallah did note that CBS had previously broadcast interviews with Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in a not-so-veiled attempt to lump Mrs Greene in with those thugs, but with Mrs Greene being a growing national figure, is covering her not actual news? But, as I’ve said before, journolists don’t really think the media should cover the news that they don’t like.

References

References
↑1 The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.